My Wishlist

Live in Byron Bay Australia 1987

Fair dinkum ! Recorded live in 1987 on tour of Australia and highlighting songs from The Big Heat , Ridgway's first solo album. A pulverizing piece of history from the shores of Byron Bay. The whole show with no breaks ! Full color sleeve with shrink wr

*PLEASE NOTE: There is an audio drop out in the song 'Camouflage' - this is due to the original source recording and not a defect on the CD or digital download.

"Stan Ridgway tells stories from the underside of America. It's the dream gone sour; the dream that never even took root. Tales of losers who battle on and play the game their own way, with a glamour-less beauty and a bath of realism...slices of lives that knew the rules have been drawn up 'someplace else'; characters that have to bluff to get by."FOLLOW MUSIC AUSTRALIA ( 1987)

"Ridgway has the talent to hold your attention by telling a tale in the same intense and clear way that rockers like Neil Young and Lou Reed do. A cool Californian commentator with a sense of humor to match his sense of history." Q MAGAZINE

"Ridgway's tales of the sad, soft underbelly of the American Dream are songs of hope petering into resignation, of idealism soured into cynicism; he's a very adult writer operating in an arena more usually home to the naive and infantile." THE INDEPENDENTS

"In fact he's an ingenious writer with a grip on low - life imagery that hearkens back to that of Burroughs, Bukowski and Brecht.. If a modern American counterpart to Bertol Brecht's collaborations with Kurt Weil exits, it's the music of Stan Ridgway." SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

"If David Lynch were a musician, he would be Stan Ridgway. Both look at Leave It To Beaver America and see serial killers lurking beneath its porches. Both can infuse a simple everyday object with weirdness and dread, creating A world that;'s consistently disturbing, fascinating and cool." L.A. WEEKLY

fair dinkum alright ! Some stuff on here like Pile Driver and Bing Can't Walk have never been released in live versions andthe whole show is here too - beginning to end. All the between song banter with the audience and band too. Absolutely fantastic! Sounds great and I hope they release more shows like this from the Ridgway vaults. Ya can't go wrong with this one. It's a slam bang knockout! 5 stars ! ( and 10 if they ever go that high).

Great show but beware...the end of "Camouflage" is chopped off. It's too bad...I am a big fan of Stan's music and "Camouflage" is my favorite song of his. That warning aside, this show is still worthwhile if you can get past this glitch.

I just by chance found this recording and it really took me back, because I was Stan's Tour Manager and FOH Engineer on this tour and I recorded the shows onto cassette every night and gave them to his manager Chris Lamson at the end of the tour. I knew they'd used a couple of tracks on the reissue of The Big Heat but then I found this so I just had to buy it and listen to it very, very loud. What a genius the guy was and is. Oh and sorry about the glitch in Camouflage but I was using an auto reverse cassette deck so as soon as the tape hit the end it just started recording on the other side straight away, I didn't have time to keep a close eye on it.

brilliant performance and crystal clear direct from FOH sound, Stan at his best

I was one of many at the University of Queensland on 27th February 1987 who were totally blown away by the brilliant performance and crystal clear powerful PA sound of the Stan Ridgway band. This recording of the 25th February show at the Byron Bay Arts Factory (in northern New South Wales) show proves that the band was consistently hot, and that their sound engineering team were world class. I was very happy to find a live recording from the Brisbane show ("Can't Stop The Show") and one from Byron Bay ("Drive She Said") included on the "Calling Out To Carol" 12" vinyl, and that they were both among the bonus tracks on the re-release of "The Big Heat". This hugely detailed and dynamic recording was made from the front of house desk direct to cassette tape. The few second gap toward the end of "Camouflage" would be where the tape changed sides and that's the only glitch in any of these tracks. I bought the download version of this album in March and have just ordered the newly available CD - which I expect will have the advantage of being truly continuous, whereas mp3 files cannot be reassembled seamlessly. Part of the stand out impact of this show is Joe Berardi using some electronic drums, and Pietra Wexstun as a keyboard artist who'd give Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson a run for their money - and then there's Stan's unique vocal stylings enhanced by the fact that he's having a great time backed by a band which lives and breathes in step with him. I defy anyone to produce a live, EQ-free recorded performance which even glimpses the power of quality of "Live In Byron Bay Australia 1987".